In my humble mom-opinion, the Birdzilla holiday is definitely the King pin of all holiday clusterflucks.

It all starts with the grocery store clusterfluck. I’m referring to the mass of non-regular customers leisurely strolling the aisles with the entire maternal side of their family in tow. Shopping is for active participants only. Spectators are not welcome in the arena… they have no purpose other than to create a clusterfluck in aisle three.

On the other end of the spectrum is the daddy-deer-in-headlights; the lost looking male sent to the front lines to retrieve forgotten items. These guys are like a stubborn hair clog in the bathroom sink… they won’t budge. We’ll call them solitary clusterflucks.

*Note – During non-holiday shopping trips I have compassion for these pitiful creatures, but unfortunately, it’s the holiday season and the only rule of shopping during the holidays is get in and get out… like your life depends on it.

You encounter the extra person clusterfluck as soon as you enter the check–out area which is not so surprisingly bustling with extra bodies much like pesky ants at a picnic. How many people does it take to swipe a debit card? The answer is ONE, meaning all inactive shopping companions should do like a banana tree and LEAVE!

Finally having completed your shopping mission, you push the heavy overflowing shopping cart with-the-bad-wheel to the outermost border of the parking lot where you were forced to retreat. This is appropriately termed the parking-in-BFE clusterfuck. This sucks because you’re a regular customer who’s earned their VIP parking spot.

Also, the more traffic flowing through the parking lot, the more likely some inattentive holiday jackass-in-a-box will pop out in front of your car and end up as a hood ornament. Live hood ornaments are right up there with Rudolph’s antlers tacked to your mirror and/or Santa’s testicles dangling from your muffler.

This is called the tacky car accessories clusterfluck.

Finally, you slide into home base, but when you attempt to unload your gargantuan grocery order, there’s nowhere to put anything because of the kitchen-counter clusterfluck and the refrigeratorclusterfluck.

You saw that one coming, didn’t you?

When food prep commences, the overflowing dirty-dishes clusterfluck is immediately created and will regenerate for another 48-72 hours, making it the biggest clusterfluck of all. I despise washing dishes. I’m a huge fan of serving left-overs on paper plates, which incidentally causes a trash can clusterfluck, but what are you gonna do?

We’re picking our battles here.

Other painful holiday clusterflucks include the obvious dinner table fiasco, where you attempt to squeeze 15 people around an 8 seater table. “No fair… I want to sit near Suzy Lou Hoo!” This is called the intimate-encounter clusterfluck and also the reason I bought the big bottle of vodka.

Then there’s the dreaded people-who-don’t-belong-in-the-kitchen clusterfluck, which is why I leave a bag of unpeeled potatoes on the table. Everyone knows as soon as guests arrive, they immediately invade your sanctuary and try to be helpful.

“Grab a potato peeler. We’ve got a clusterfluck and a half of potatoes to peel,” says me.

To clear up any confusion, the tryptophan found in turkey not only makes you sleepy, it can give you a strong urge to dive off the roof of Macy’s during the Thanksgiving Day parade – right into Underdog’s inflatable ass, which would be affectionately termed the contipated balloon character clusterfluck.

And no, you will not catch me out and about on Black Friday. That’s an entirely separate clusterfluck in itself, worthy of it’s very own holiday book-of-rants.

Stick a spork in me.

This pilgrim is done… at least until the Christmas-time clusterfluck begins.

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